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Published: November 2nd 2009
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Dubrovnik
With a town like that and a beach like that, you can't really complain. They say you must visit Croatia. They are dead right. Two and a half hours after embarkation of jet on a grey Surrey afternoon at Gatwick, we were in Split, in a cosy bay in the Eastern Adriatic. We were recommended for our first culinary experience of the holiday that evening a small underground mum-and-dad-run restaurant. The lighting was cruel, the music was bad, and the food was amazing. What followed was nine days of seafood risottos, fried sardines, hake, octopus and mussels complimented by crisp, dry and simple local white wines.
Thanks to rather brilliantly losing my drivers' licence a year ago and failing to mention it to anyone (I lost the licence card itself - I didn't commit a felony if that's what you're thinking!), our plan to travel by hire-car was revised at the last-minute, so buses it had to be. Croatia - as you may be aware - is a rather oddly shaped country, with a thin bit stretching down the Adriatic, hogging the best beaches at the expense of its Baltic neighbour, Bosnia and Herzegovina. When we were bussing down to Dubrovnik, we had to pass through Bosnia's paltry 10 km stretch of coastline, passport
Xavier on moterboat
I had by this stage relaxed. A day in charge of a boat without causing death or injury: job done. checks and all. Ten minutes in Bosnia was long enough for us to get on our knees and kiss the earth (irrefutable proof one has been to a country - everyone knows that) and join the busy scramble to buy as much cheap stuff as possible in the supermarket. The bus trip down the coast was uniformly jaw-dropping: mountains, walled villages with red roofs, islands in the distance and always the intense aquamarine of the Mediterranean Sea.
We very soon discovered that it wouldn't be necessary to go to the effort of booking accommodation ahead of arriving at a town. Every time we exited a bus or a boat, a small army of little old ladies would swamp us offering us cut-price stays in their houses. They would show us map of how central they were to town centres and lure us in with photos of comfortable beds, luxuriant bathroom units and balconies with sweeping views. Inexplicably, most tourists seems to find this irritating and intrusive - whereas Ursula and I calmly set about looking at the options, negotiating, getting in one of the old ladies' cars, and hoping we wouldn't get abducted.
On the second half of
our stay, we abandoned buses, and went back up the coast on ferries island-hopping: Lopud (relaxed, like... catatonic), Korcula (stunning village, beautiful Island) and Hvar (playground of the rich). On the latter island, Ursula had the brilliant suggestion of spending a day exploring the nearby smaller islands by hiring a small motorboat, with me taking on the role of skipper and general alpha-male. A young man with lots of rings in his face gave me a very brief instruction on how to operate a motorboat. I won't lie, I was scared. The man with the rings was scared too when I managed to nearly break his boat on some rocks within 15 seconds of taking control. We proceeded on with our adventure anyway, and, against all odds, returned seven hours later with his boat intact.
Thanks to being in Croatia in the latter half of September we were in what is considered the first weeks of the "off-season". This meant cheaper prices, more relaxed locals, and temperatures in the high-twenties rather then the thirties. A woman of Hvar told us that in July and August so many Italians would cross the Adriatic from Ancona in gigantic ferries, that at
night the main square would be filled with tourists in sleeping bags that couldn't find accommodation that night. I'll take the off-season than, thanks.
To choose a highlight would be difficult, but Dubrovnik's city walls were hard to beat. In fact, according to the Lonely Planet (our bible) they are "the best city-walls in the world". We (and the camera) got a serious workout. Another unforgettable scene was in Korcula town in the evening after gorging on sardines: we chanced upon a huddle of six middle-aged men in an alcove in front of a medieval municipal building. They were enacting an age-old Croatian ritual of male close-harmony singing and flirting with whichever females, local or touristic, took an interest. There were a couple of young guys on the periphery humming along and waiting for an offer to join the main group of singers, presumably within the next decade or so.
It was all such a pleasure! As I write this, and every day in London is a little darker then the one before, I can still feel a lingering benefit of the Vitamin D from nine days of unfettered sunshine and Omega 3 from the fish-eating on the
Split at dawn
Sounds like the end of a perfect one-night-stand. Geddit!? Dalmatian coast.
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Lina
non-member comment
I am so jealous! Looks like you've had an amazing time and I made a promise to myself to go there before I die. The bit about the motor boat guy made me giggle hihi (Now let me guess.... who wrote this blog? You (sng) or You (pl) ? :)